Plantations and Chocolate

What did New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin mean when he said the rebuilt city will be “chocolate?”

Maybe he meant just what he said. The 2000 census recorded 484,674 people in New Orleans. Of that number, 325,947 (over 67%) were black or African-American. Only 135,956 classified themselves as white, making New Orleans a city populated by a majority of people we should certainly not call “vanilla.” Too bad some of us never noticed this city’s black population and other “minorities” until they washed up on our TV screens in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Now they're just waiting to come home.


What did New York’s Senator Hillary Clinton mean when she said the House of Representatives was run “like a plantation?”

Let’s see… A big white building below the Mason-Dixon line, sitting on a hill, filled with a majority of well-to-do white men, exchanging money for favors, and making rules for people who, at the very least, feel they are disenfranchised…. Hmmmm… All of Congress is like a plantation, when you think about it.


No matter how you look at it, too many of us are still waiting for our 40 acres and a mule while other people get rich.